New PriceStrat® Release Empowers Omnichannel Retailers to Improve
Speed and Competitiveness in Price and Promotion Strategy

August 14, 2014 03:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--KSS Retail, from dunnhumby, today unveiled a major update to its
industry-leading PriceStrat® price and promotion optimisation
solution for merchandising and category management teams. PriceStrat
version 5.4 boasts new automation capabilities and advancements in
efficiency and flexibility, enabling omnichannel retailers to conduct
faster “what-if” planning, and more effectively use pricing and
promotions as a competitive advantage in the race to win shopper loyalty.

Retailers of fast-moving consumer goods face challenges setting the
right prices in a market where key variables are constantly changing.
They need to stay price-competitive, particularly in the product
categories where shoppers are most price-sensitive, or risk losing
customers, according to industry analysts. Inaccurate or outdated data
on supplier costs or competitor prices can have a major business impact,
so responding quickly to market fluctuations is a strategic imperative.

With the new Automated Pricing module available now in PriceStrat 5.4,
merchants can seamlessly bring in updated costs or competitive data from
third-party sources, and then according to predefined pricing policies,
execute price changes dynamically. Retailers can also set up rules and
alerts that identify when price changes require management review and
consideration. This straight-through processing capability eliminates
much of the manual work that slows down organisational responsiveness.
Automated Pricing also signals managers when prices fall out of
compliance with predefined targets. This enables organisations to move
away from the traditional practice of re-optimising categories based on
a calendar system, and instead rely on their own data on shopper
behavior to reveal when adjustments should be made to unlock market
potential.

In addition, PriceStrat 5.4 continues to deliver on KSS Retail’s
emphasis on productivity and ease of use for pricing teams, with
enhancements that make day-to-day pricing and promotion optimisation
activities faster and more intuitive. By streamlining tasks and
improving efficiency, merchants can focus on making strategic decisions
based on data insights. With PriceStrat 5.4, retailers can now:

Simulate the impact of baseline cost and retail changes more easily
during “what-if” planning, and better incorporate actual customer
expectations

Increase sales of slow-moving items through more accurate forecasting
capabilities

Support a broader range of currency denominations to help global
businesses extend into new markets

“As we face tough competition, we are looking forward to taking
advantage of the new Automated Pricing functionality in PriceStrat 5.4
to help us respond quickly and deliver competitive pricing to our
shoppers,” said Kent Butterfield, Director of Pricing with Associated
Food Stores, a regional grocery retail and wholesale chain based in the
U.S. “PriceStrat 5.4 will help us not only make faster, more informed
decisions about price and promotion across the organisation, but will
also help streamline the way we work, ultimately saving us significant
time and effort,” Butterfield continued.

“In an increasingly transparent consumer marketplace, shoppers have more
access to price information than ever. That’s why the new features in
PriceStrat 5.4 are focused on helping retailers accelerate the pace at
which they are able to adapt their pricing strategy in response to
customer and competitor activity,” said Yael Cosset, CEO of KSS Retail.
“With industry-leading science that’s already been proven and tested in
some of the world’s top retail organisations, PriceStrat 5.4 takes
predictive mining of shopper data to the next level – ultimately
enabling organisations to quickly roll out prices and promotions that
are highly relevant and tailored to each of their markets, whether
online or offline, in any part of the world.”